HELPING CHILDREN FEEL SECURE (EVEN IF THE WORLD FEELS SCARY)

The past several years might have felt pretty scary. With a pandemic, political strife and even some shooting conflicts, the world is unsure. It does not take much more in our own lives to feel overwhelmed. Sometimes, I notice even a favorite restaurant closing can feel like more change than I can bear. And what if your personal life has something truly difficult in it? It’s a lot.

We want our children to feel secure, even in a mixed-up world. We want them to know that, no matter what, they are loved and they will be ok. Then, our children will feel safe. But that can be hard to get to, especially when we ourselves lack some confidence. Of course, misrepresenting things to our children—nothing to worry about here!—does not fool anyone. But more importantly, it can also interfere with your children actually feeling secure.

Kids Brains

Children have less life experience and their brains are still growing. So, they think in a very particular way.

First, they use their parents’ moods and emotions as a gauge. This ancient strategy allows children to draw close when there is danger and to roam when things are safe. Reading others’ emotions is a crucial empathic life skill, and we want children to do it and do it accurately.

Second, children are self-focused. They have a hard time imaging things or people outside of what pertains to them. And their time horizon is short. A few months is a long, long time. As they get older (starting at about 5 years) their capacity to imagine others starts increasing, but it takes at least another 20 years of brain maturation, learning, and practice. Talk about a long, long time horizon! Until they acquire that skill children assume that whatever happens is a direct result of what they do or even how they feel. They cannot consider that there might be other factors.

For example, if I am driving in my car with my school age child, and that child wants me to change the music, I might snap. My child experiences my snapping as caused by their behavior, and they are not wrong. They are just not right. I might be in traffic. My work might have created problems that day. I might, subconsciously, be worrying about something a friend said to me. If someone cuts me off in traffic and then my child says something about the music, it might be too much for me right then and I would lose my poise. This is a completely ordinary chain of events. And usually, this chain of events is not a problem, especially because I might very much need and wish my child to stop talking about the music! Generally, a situation like that is not significantly out of proportion or is manageable by small reconnections that we do automatically.

But, what if the problem on my mind is more than simple traffic, like the pandemic was? Safety during the pandemic was unclear to everyone and we were all upset. When living like that, I will be off my game, and I will be off my game for much of the time, over a long time. I might try to stay calm or not react to unrelated things, but I will surely miss the mark at least once in a while. If I snap about a small thing, my child really cannot understand that I am also trying to keep myself calm about a big adult thing. Or, my child might know the big adult things, but cannot put it into proportion, especially if I cannot keep proportion myself in that moment. My child just knows the snap. Gauging from the feelings right then, my child intuits seriousness, or danger.

Pizza Poise

Think of adult poise and calm as a pizza pie. When the pizza gets delivered, there are 8 slices. Ask yourself—how many slices of your pizza are left after giving them away to all the things that are happening in life? If you are down to your last slice of pizza, it will be hard to react proportionately. That’s normal. The parenting problem is that your children, emotionally and neurologically, only know and care about that last slice, their slice.

Somehow, we need to communicate to our children that our reaction’s high volume came because we are out of pizza, and not completely about what they did. Then, their emotional world with you makes sense. They see that the situation is not largely about them or what they do or feel. Children can handle a lot if their world with you makes sense emotionally.

How do we do that?

Model Self Compassion

Initially, we must forgive ourselves our humanity. Children are borne of humans and they can understand that humans are at best, imperfect. That includes you and them! Learning from you by how you treat yourself is the very best way to model that compassion. We do not need to engage in justification, excessive guilt, self-shaming or extreme self-criticism when we are imperfect. We are doing our best, even if right now our best is only so-so. When we model self-compassion and self-forgiveness, our children get it for themselves. So, do it!

Seek Forgiveness

When we are able to forgive ourselves, we can reconnect and seek forgiveness from our children. We need to be honest, complete, and age-appropriate. Honest means emotionally honest. However, it does not mean “emotional.” Describe yourself truly while being even tempered. “I was too angry.” “I lost my cool.” “I was very, very sad.” Complete means accurately describe what is taking your pizza poise away. Stay simple and clear. “Work is getting me down.” “My friend and I argued yesterday.” Lastly, stay age appropriate. Don’t provide all the details about the things that worry you lest your children become overwhelmed themselves and carry the burden of your worry. Highly charged, detailed descriptions, for example, about how bad your boss is, or how outrageous the CDC is, or whatever is most pressing for you are best avoided. That is for your friends or your partner.

With honest, complete, age-appropriate emotional information, your children can understand that your feelings in a moment were overwrought but were not actually because of them. They learn from watching how to deal with those types of feelings.

The Right Amount

So, for example, after the car ride with my child, I might say, “Sweetie, I really blew a gasket in the car when you asked to change the music. I am sorry about that, because it really was too much. I let my worry about the traffic and about something at work get the better of me, and it was a mistake to yell at you. I am sorry about that. I’ll try to keep that from happening again, so I don’t yell quite so much.”

In that way, your children will know they can call you out, they can ask, they can clarify, they can have information from you that they can digest. This tool is especially important for the big adult things that are eating your pizza. And its important for your children in adult life. This process also makes children closer to their parents, and ultimately know they are truly secure. Then, they are in fact as safe as real life ever is and they will feel it.

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Helping parents navigate life challenges positively and be the best parents they can be, whatever life brings, is the heart of my practice. Please contact me at 917-583-9358 or therapy,gail.sinal.lcsw@gmail.com to learn more or discuss whether working together is right for you.